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London council to check tower blocks have been strengthened to government standard
Hammersmith & Fulham Council has commissioned an engineering consultancy to check if two of its tower blocks have been strengthened to the standard required by the government.
Hartopp Point and Lannoy Point are large panel system blocks built by Taylor Woodrow Anglian, the same developer that built the four blocks on the Ledbury Estate in Southwark where the local council switched off the gas supply last year after safety concerns were raised by engineers. Residents on the Ledbury Estate also reported large cracks in their walls that would allow smoke and flames to pass through.
The two Hammersmith & Fulham blocks do not have a gas supply but residents have reported fire safety issues over a number of years, including cracks in their walls.
Shortly after the Ronan Point collapse in 1968, the government ordered landlords with similar large panel blocks to have them strengthened so that without a gas supply they could withstand an explosive force of 2.5 pounds per square inch (psi).
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A spokesperson for Hammersmith & Fulham Council said last August that the blocks were inspected in 2015 and the exposed concrete was found to be in “good condition” and the council’s own structural engineer would carry out extra inspections to check the buildings.
But the council has now commissioned engineering consultancy Arup to check the buildings have been strengthened to withstand an explosive force of 2.5 psi. Arup will do an intrusive survey of the flats throughout the blocks to determine what action is needed.
Following the Ledbury Estate discovery, the government wrote to social landlords to instruct them to check any large panel system buildings they own and to warn them that gaps are a “common characteristic” of the blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s.
Large panel buildings, a popular form of construction in the post-War period, have large slabs of factory-made concrete which are bolted together on site. But they fell out of favour after the Ronan Point disaster in east London in 1968, when a gas explosion caused the panels to slip and collapse, killing four people.
